The introduction of a new Professional Plus version of Prepar3D for advanced training

Updates to the digital rights management and licensing process

User interface updates, as well as many other exciting updates to the core platform

An updated SDK including many requested features and a new iSimObject API that allows
developers full control over their SimObjects

Known issues resolved list

Rendering and Performance Improvements

The core rendering system in Prepar3D has been completely overhauled and updated
from DirectX 9 to DirectX 11. Prepar3D is now able to better take advantage of modern
graphics hardware. This has two main benefits to the user, increased performance
and control over what is displayed, as well as the ability to have modern rendering
features added to the rendering engine.

Performance Improvements

Object Instancing

Instancing allows the rendering system to have graphics cards draw multiple copies
of the same entity just once. This greatly improves autogen building and tree performance.

GPU Particle and Effect System

Effects are now simulated through the new GPU (graphics card) particle system

Training scenarios with much more effects rendered on the scene are now possible

Tessellated Terrain on the Graphics Card

The previous work being done to generate terrain mesh is now done on the graphics
card.

Fully dynamic night and day light cycles

Terrain lighting is now able to be done dynamically on the card, whereas previous
shadows and lighting had to be baked into the textures and reloaded when time changed

Terrain paging performance greatly improved

Trainees in fast flight scenarios will see their terrain paged in much quicker as
it is being done on the graphics card

Multi-Threading Support

Visual scene and rendering optimizations are now be done on background threads

Shader compilation is now threaded out which greatly reduces stuttering effects
that some users had with previous versions

Resources are now able to be shared between views

A single update can be shared across virtual cockpit views greatly increasing performance
with multiple views open

Round world coordinate conversion now able to be done on the GPU

Visual Rendering Engine Improvements

Prepar3D Now Has an Updated Real-Time Shadow System

Fully dynamic variance cascaded shadow maps

Supporting an unlimited number of objects receiving and casting shadows inside shadow
range

Full support for object self-occlusion, including virtual cockpit self-shadowing

Terrain able to receive and cast shadows in real-time

Soft shadows support through separable blur pass filters

Day and night cycle support within the shadow system

Weather support (lightning able to affect shadows)

A Modernized Lighting System

Through tone mapping, views are now able simulate the effect of your eyes adjusting
to the brightness of a scene

Improved simulation of night visibility

Bloom lighting effects greatly improved

A Vibrant New 3D Living Water Surface

Dynamic 3D waves and water surface based on weather conditions and wind speed

Water lighting and shading improved for greater realism

Volumetric Fog and Cloud and Weather Improvements

The appearance of flying through fog and clouds has been greatly improved

Light is now simulated as it passes through visibility and cloud layers defined
in the Prepar3D weather system

Specular Lighting Terrain Support Enabled

Land classes now have specular values that will affect how they reflect light (for
example, snow and roads now reflect light differently, snow is shinier, etc.)

Improved control over anti-aliasing up to 8x MSAA and FXAA support

Global anisotropic filtering support up to 16x

A Modernized Full-Screen Mode

Fullscreen mode is now non-exclusive

The mode switch is much faster

Windows can span more than one monitor in full-screen mode

Plug-ins can create their own windows

Bringing up the kneeboard or ATC windows won't cause delays in fullscreen mode as
they used to

Prepar3D Professional Plus for Advanced Training

In addition to the academic and professional licenses of Prepar3D, a new Professional
Plus license has been released to support advanced training. Professional Plus brings
an extensible weapons training capability, as well as Learning Management
System interfaces.

A fully-configurable, dynamic weapons system has been added to Prepar3D to allow
our military-focused customers the ability to develop training using
Prepar3D. Support for targeting, bombs, missiles, guns, and countermeasures are
included, as are examples to show you how to implement features in your training.

Generic and Extensible Weapon System Functionality

Add weapons features to existing vehicles or build features into newly developed
vehicles

Weapons can be generic or implemented through the new SimObject API

Targeting can be accomplished programmatically or through mouse-clicking

Attached objects dynamically influence the owner object until release

Dynamic scoring and object health system implemented

Including damage to objects in the area surrounding a point of weapon impact

Weapon Control system implemented

Includes aiming, safety enable/disable, and weapon select added

Supports Manual and Automatic Aiming/Targeting

Two new SimObject types have been implemented

Weapon SimObjects: Projectiles, Missiles, Bombs, etc.

Configurable Propulsion and Aerodynamics xml files to quickly develop and configure
created weapons

Easily attachable to parent SimObjects through xml

Externally to a modeled pylon or right to the vehicle model

Internally to a modeled weapons bay

Countermeasure SimObjects

System implemented for measures or actions taken to counter or offset another one
(i.e. chaff and flare)

Included Weapons Gauge Sample

Show weapon configuration for specific SimObject (station and load out information)

AI Behaviors Added

Attacker

Combat Air Patrol

Combat Air Support

Pursue

Search and Track

Wingman Formation Flight

Learning Management System Tools

Implemented interface for launching flights

Created services for Flight/Lesson Status

Updates to the Digital Rights Management and Licensing process

The Prepar3D licensing and digital rights management (DRM) has been updated to allow
users greater control over their licenses and to make the process easier for users
to uninstall and reinstall or change their computer hardware.

New digital rights management (DRM/licensing) control:

Automatic license deactivation during uninstall. Allows users to uninstall Prepar3D
and transfer the license to another computer without having to contact technical
support

User Interface Updates

We have received a lot of feedback on the user interface of Prepar3D and have made
many changes to improve the layout, the functionality, and the look and feel of
how you configure Prepar3D.

A startup screen option has been introduced that allows trainees to pick initial
conditions and graphical profile settings

The graphical user interface design has been refreshed for version 2.0

The default graphical setting profiles have been removed, and users now have the
ability to configure and name their own custom graphical setting profiles

A new Quick Time menu option that lets the trainee dynamically change the time of
day of their training

The select vehicle screen has been redesigned with a 3D preview, a new way to browse,
and the ability to add favorites

The load and save flight screens have been redesigned to make it much easier to
organize large collections of flights

Controls Settings Interface Update

Added a search capability to quickly find relevant controls

Added sorting for SimObject Events

Added sorting for Weapon Events

Additional General Updates to the Platform

Added the ability for customers to customize the menu and context menu items that
trainees see and are able to access by allowing them to remove menu options via
a config file or the command line

Added a new pause mode "Host Freeze" where only the position of the ownship is frozen

Added a new pause mode "Entities Freeze" where the position of all entities in the
simulation are frozen

Consolidated the in-app Learning Center and the SDK Learning Center into a more
friendly windows help format

Scenario File (.flt) is replaced with an XML wrapped version (.FXML) to support great
flexibility and customization

An error is now displayed to the user when their dll.xml is corrupt and cannot be
loaded

Across the board updates to the windows and panels system

Users can now create and customize cameras at run time through a dedicated user
interface

The Virtual Cockpit can now be made transparent

Cameras can now pan to defined points of interest

Per-view Render able Object Filtering has been added so users can filter out what
should be and shouldn't be drawn in specific views

Field of View settings for Cameras have been added and can be configured in the
camera.cfg entries

Camera definition options in the camera.cfg have been streamlined

Custom post-process effects can now be added to windows and chained together via
the Camera.cfg or at runtime

SimDirector: Mission Creation Tool Suite

A new set of tools was required for the rapid creation of training scenarios. SimDirector
eclipses the legacy Object Placement Tool and adds drag-and-drop support and a new
virtual instructor for more dynamic delivery of training feedback to trainees using
Prepar3D.

General Information

A WYSIWG Modernized User Interface

Ribbon Interface for tool organization

Dock-able Framework to enable a user customizable workspace

Objects and actions and triggers are able to be dragged and dropped into the world

Mission Object and Logic Property Editing

Mission Object List Interface

Expandable Tree view based on object type for quick navigation through lists

Text based filtering based on Object Title

Object placement using Drag-and-Drop (with drag gable previews)

Preview object in thumbnail so reviewing objects is accessible

Two Separate Views for editing the world

Map View

Mouse wheel zoom and pan for effortless world navigation

Icons for mission objects when zoomed out

Object view

3D view of placed Objects

Waypoint Editor Interface

Dynamically create multiple Waypoint Lists

Create waypoints by clicking on Map view or from user interface

Waypoint connectivity visualized for manageable list editing

Waypoints are draggable for effortless list creation

Move Waypoints from one list to another

Easily assign Waypoint lists to AI Objects

Two Separate Modes for Mission Creation

World Editor Mode: Object Placement and Interaction

Allows for free movement around the world detached from own ship

Preview Mode: Preview Mission and use the Virtual Instructor

Dynamically change simulation speed

Pause AI Objects during Mission Preview

Monitor simulation variables to support debugging missions

Mission Step Recorder

Configurable recording of flight and user inputs

Converts user inputs (discrete and continuous) to Mission Steps

Mission Environment Editing enabled from within SimDirector

Own ship

Location

Weather (User-defined or theme)

Time and Season

Software Development Kit (SDK) Enhancements for Developers

The Prepar3D software development kit (SDK) has been greatly enhanced for v2.0. A
new iSimObject API has been created to allow developers full control over the SimObject
implementations. Several enhancements have also been made to the modeling tools,
the gauges and panels system, as well as requested additions from our developer
network and forum users to the SimConnect interface.

General Updates

Streamlined the SDK content and examples to make it easier to find relevant information

External SimObjects can now participate in ATC

SimObject API Implementation

Create a simulation object (SimObject) complete with customized behaviors, input
properties (also referred to as events or triggers), and state properties (also
referred to as simvars or simply properties)

Custom events created for your simobject implementation can be configured for joystick,
keyboard, and mouse use

RadarSignatures can now be used as an object filter for gauges

Field of View (FOV) can now be defined in the Camera.cfg

Terrain Import Tutorial Added

Known Issues Resolved

The Prepar3D development team constantly monitors the support forums for improvements
to the platform, as well as leveraged feedback from the Prepar3D developer network.
The issues below were brought up by various developers or forum members.

The ATC and other windows now allow keyboard controls to be passed through to the
simulation

Fixed a bug where terrain was reloaded when you changed graphical settings that
did not need a terrain reload

Fixed a user-reported issue where the ATIS frequency and Tower Frequency were conflicting
for AYPY

Multiple Issues with the Flight Planner Have Been Resolved:

The Flight Plan Default title now populates and saves correctly

Flight Plans saved from a legacy application without titles now show in the Prepar3D
Flight Planner

Fixed an issue where many joysticks would have their throttle mapped to an incorrect
axis by default

Fixed an issue where the SimConnect variable SIMCONNECT_GROUND_INFO_LATLON_FORMAT_METERS
returned the lat value in radians instead of the correct value of meters

Fixed an issue where planes with multiple engines weren't having their flight hours
saved in the log book

Fixed an issue where the Scenery Library could crash if the scenery.cfg file had
a "Required=" entry

Fixed an issue where the Kneeboard and ATC window could render with an incorrect
orientation if a monitor had its screen orientation rotated in Windows

The phrase "Free Flight" has been removed or clarified in all documentation

UISettings.xml has been moved to %APPDATA%\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v2

Fixed an issue where the ShowUserLabel flag in the Prepar3D.CFG file was not getting
properly saved

Aprons and Taxiways will now respect the drawSurface flag to disable their rendering
in the simulation if specified by a scenery developer

Fixed an issue where there was a 4x rotational limit enforced even when a user selected
a runtime sim rate greater than 4x

Fixed an issue where the multiplayer port range would change back to 6112-6122 when
changed to be outside of that range

Fixed an issue where you could be sent to the wrong StartPoint from the SelectAirport
screen

Fixed an issue where IFROnly was not getting properly saved to the Prepar3D.cfg